Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 28, 2022 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Alexandra Deignan - Head of Investor Relations & Corporate Sustainability

Evan Russo - Chief Financial Officer

Kenneth Jacobs - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Peter Orszag - Chief Executive Officer, Financial Advisory

Conference Call Participants

Brennan Hawken - UBS

Richard Ramsden - Goldman Sachs

Devin Ryan - JMP Securities

Manan Gosalia - Morgan Stanley

Jeff Harte - Piper Sandler

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Lazard's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

At this time I will turn the call over to Alexandra Deignan, Lazard's Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability. Please go ahead.

Alexandra Deignan

Thanks [indiscernible]. Good morning and welcome to Lazard's Earnings Call for the Second Quarter and First Half of 2022. I am Alexandra Deignan, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability. In addition to today's audio comments, we posted our earnings release and an investor presentation on our website. A replay of this call will also be available on our website today.

Before we begin, let me remind you that we may make forward-looking statements about our business and performance. There are important factors that could cause our actual level of activity performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements including not limit to those factors discussed in the company's SEC filings, which you can access on our website.

Lazard [indiscernible] no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these [indiscernible] This discussion also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures that we [indiscernible] on the company's performance. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release at investor presentation.

Hosting our call today are Kenneth Jacobs, Lazard's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Evan Russo, Chief Financial Officer. Evan will start the discussion with an overview of our financial results, then Ken will provide outlook for [indiscernible].

I'll now turn the call over to Evan Russo.

Evan Russo

Good morning. Today we reported operating revenue of $676 million for the second quarter of 2022 compared to revenue of $821 million in the same period of 2021 amid challenging market conditions. Operating revenue for the first half of 2022 was $1.4 billion compared to $1.5 billion in the first half of 2021.